Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi: An Architect of Modern India

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Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi was the product of the Ganghian renaissance when social service was the keynote of public life. Responding to the call of the Mahatma he plunged into the freedom struggle and became the beloved leader of his people and the tallest public figure in eastern India. He played the crucial, secular and historical role in saving Assam from merging with East Pakistan under the Transfer of Power Act.

Subsequently he served his people as the Chief Minister of the greater Assam-perhaps the most universally popular and non-controversial executive the state ever had. He was Lokopriya in every sense of the term. In the core of his heart, however, he remained the humble social worker who strongly held the view that Swarajya was incomplete till we got rid of poverty and illiteracy.

A highly cultivated, well-read and civilised person, he spoke and wrote effectively and abundantly. The book is a unique collection of his speeches, writings, letters and addresses. Together they form a slice of India's pre-and post-Independence history, throwing light on yet explored areas of national politics and public life. His personal letters to leaders, friends, common men, wife and children bring out the sterling qualities of the head and heart of one of the all-time great leaders of contemporary India.

Dr Lily Mazinder Baruah graduated from Cotton College, Guwahati, did her MA and PhD in Botany and secured distinction in Bodo language from the Institute of North-eastern Languages Society. She heads the Department of Botany in B.Borooah College, Guwahati. Inspired by her mother, she became a Sarvodaya worker, serving social service institutions such as Harijan Sevak Sangh and Kasturba Memorial Trust. She has represented her state in world conferences, conducts human values programme, and writes frequently on a variety of subjects social, scientific and biographical.

Dr Baruah is the youngest daughter of Lokopriya Gopinath Borodoloi, and Shrimati Surbala Borodoloi, which explains her access to her father's rare correspondence and intimate portrayal included in this volume.

The book was compiled by the editor while the birth centenary celebration of Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi-a true architect of modern India-was being observed throughout the length and breadth of the country. The work, thus, bears the prime significance of time.

Since 1857 turmoil was taking place into British India Lokopriya was born in 1890. He established his profile as a leader of backward State like Assam. He completed his academic career in 1917 obtaining M.A. and B.L. degrees although he began teaching as the Headmaster of a school. He later worked as an advocate at the Bar. But he was impressed by Gandhiji's clarion call to join the Non-Cooperation Movement, and having seen in him his political Guru in 1921 inspired to jump upon the freedom movement of India. A careerist and an outstanding legal practitioner Lokopriya became a changed man; he gave up regular earning professions and engaged himself in nation-building devotion till August 6, 1950 while he died in harness as the First Premier (Chief Minister) of Assam in free India.

Amongst the stalwarts of the freedom movement, statesmen, leaders and administrators of India in transition, Lokopriya was the man of words. And he was also a man of few words, but he remains alive: "Kirtiryasya sa Jivati and his speeches too remind us of Bhavabhuti's saying: "The speeches of ordinary good men follow facts, while facts follow the utterances of primeval sages". His own writings and speeches as the editor embodied in this work are the ample proofs in highlighting Lokopriya's acumen on different contexts and occasions. The editor has done a marvellous task by collecting significant facts from its original writings which have been very carefully preserved either by herself or by her near and dear ones. Thereby she proves her eager and love to bring things in their originals in the true pursuit of knowledge to one who craves for it and is the real perspective. These original historical collections on per sonal endeavour are shined as pearls and added to the beauty of the book that needs in true perspective. Ten significant speeches, as many as twenty-eight personal letters corresponding with Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Shri Prakash, Akbar Hydari, A. Clow, Mr. Debeswar Sarma and others would bring the readers of the book to understand the actual gravity of the political situations in the prevailing circumstances and how to handle them with a view to problem solving measures from the time point of view in the greater interest of the largest number of masses.

Similarly, four discussions and five articles of his own mind ex-pressed on political philosophy, ethics, love for humanity are supplemented by as many as twenty-one articles written by Kalelkar, G.B.Pant, Dr. P.Sittaramaya, Jagjivan Ram, Dr. B.K. Bhattacharya, Prof. C.K. Mehta, Hem Barua, Satish Chandra Kakati and others. Ample references in this regard are the addition of obituaries.

His discussions with Mahatma Gandhi on a number of occasions would surely draw attention of everyone who would go through them.

Out of three Appendices of it, 'diary' reveals a part of the busy daily life which he led during pre-independence period of India. But prison life gave Lokopriya the tease he needed to make plan for future activities if India would win political freedom. Both leisure and a measure of detachment of his prison life shaped the future course of action firm in his mind. Whatsoever, it might not be unthinkable sometimes, the injustice, the unhappiness, the uncertainty, the brutality of the world oppress one and darken one's mind. With the British Government's inhuman actions and repressive Laws Lokopriya's mind and heart were occupied with patriotic and nationalistic ideas, cult of Swedeshi and Gandhian ideology but against colonial rules.

Out of six chapters of the book, Chapter III consists of the reports and memoranda which bear the report also drafted by Lokopriya as Chairman of the North-East Frontier (Assam) Tribal and Excluded Areas Committee and submitted to the Constituent Assembly that was chaired by Dr. Rajendra Prasad. The report strongly reflected the feelings of Gopinath Bordoloi about tribals of North-East as well as other areas of India. Ultimately, his observations and dream came into reality while Sixth Schedule took place in the Draft Constitution of India which was signed and approved by the Members of the Constituent Assembly on November 9, 1949.

Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi whose birth centenary was celebrated by our nation last year, belongs to that remarkable generation which won freedom for India.

Bordoloiji personified the cultural ethos of Assam and deeply felt aspirations of the people of Assam. He was a dearly loved leader. The respect and affection with which he was held by the public had grown over long years of close and intense personal interaction between Gopinathji and the people of Assam. He had mingled with and become one with the common-folk in the towns, villages and hamlets and even in areas difficult to reach. He had first hand information of the requirements of the people and possessed the ability to organize social action alongwith party initiatives. The Naga Leader Phizo's admiration for Bordoloiji is well known (be had acknowledged Bordoloiji as a "Friend of Nagas"). The personality, perceptions and leadership of this outstanding patriot bear a continuing relevance today.

Gopinathji was acutely aware of the formidable complexity of social, economic and political problems which had kept the people of Assam trapped for centuries in poverty, ignorance and despair. He was aware that the people of Assam, though exceptionally gifted with the highest aptitudes, in a land richly endowed with natural resources, were poor and suffered greatly. Bordoloiji represented the urges and aspirations of the masses for peace, social justice and progress.

He appreciated, unerringly, that the problems and the challenges that confronted Assam, comprised only the Assamese facets of a sub-continental crisis that gripped the entire country. He saw that the causes of, poverty, ignorance and frustration in Assam, as in the rest of India, were che and the same. He recognized that the very complexity and magnitude of these problems meant that effective solutions could be organized only on the basis of national unity and the power of concerted nation-wide effort. Such an approach was to him not only a matter of political ideology, but of indispensable, urgent and practical necessity.

It was therefore natural for Gopinathji to integrate the urge for freedom in Assam with nation-wide struggle under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji selected Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi as the first Satyagrahi in Assam, and, in turn, Bordoloiji's devotion to all aspects of Gandhian thoughts was total. His commitment to Gandhiji's call of rural reconstruction and promotion of Khadi and Village industries was reflected in the Gauhati Session of the Indian National Congress in 1926, where even the material for tents was made of Khadi. Gopinathji fully appreciated the value of rural industrialization of the context of the needs of economic growth in Assam and the tradition of cottage and village industry amongst the people.

Gopinath Bordoloi's leadership of the freedom struggle in Assam gave a larger dimension to the entire movement for Independence in India. A province in one comer of the sub-continent had come into the mainstream of national politics. His vision, dynamism and popular leader-ship contributed significantly to the totality of the nation's efforts to free itself from the foreign yoke and to emerge as a sovereign, independent nation wedded to the ideals of democracy, secularism and social justice. At the time of Partition, Gopinathji's understanding of the inner wishes of the people of Assam, his firm resolve, vision and leadership, account in great measure for Assam's position in the Union of India, and Assam's Statehood.

The experience of success during the struggle for freedom resulting from nation-wide action by people from different provinces, was clear proof of Gopinathji's perception that Assam's problems could be success-fully tackled only by the people of Assam working in an atmosphere of national unity, and Centre-State and inter-State cooperation.

He was conscious of the fact that the requirements of the masses of India comprise a vast market encouraging sustainable socio-economic growth in Assam. The infrastructure in Assam that Gopinathji strove to develop was designed to draw upon the national economy for building Assam and contributing also to national wealth thus creating further potential for Assam's development. He realized that a closed economy confining Assam within itself would only constrict and retard Assam's potential for prosperity and security.